Free Republic

ALBANY – Controversial “Clean Slate” legislation will no longer allow murder convictions and other serious felonies to get sealed after Albany Democrats tweaked bill language on Monday. The proposal would allow convicted people to apply to have their crimes nixed from their records after they serve their sentences, parole, and probation as well as a period of three years for misdemeanors and eight years for felonies. Narrowing the scope of the bill, which also exempts sex crimes, comes as Albany Democrats near a final deal on passing the bill before the scheduled end of the 2023 legislative session on Friday....

NEW YORK - Although it has already taken nearly four decades to get this far in building the Internet, some university researchers with the federal government's blessing want to scrap all that and start over. The idea may seem unthinkable, even absurd, but many believe a "clean slate" approach is the only way to truly address security, mobility and other challenges that have cropped up since UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock helped supervise the first exchange of meaningless test data between two machines on Sept. 2, 1969. The Internet "works well in many situations but was designed for completely different assumptions,"...